The problems
confronting the current TV ratings system are two-fold: not only can a program
be misrated according to its content, but such misrated shows are often rerun at
a later date. As a result, a show that contains content inappropriate for
children can continue to infiltrate the homes of millions of families even after
the original air date.

Take the August 7th
episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. This episode originally
aired on October 10, 2006 and was rated TV-14. This rating tells parents that
the program contains material they may find inappropriate for children under
14—but that is where the information about the content stops. According to
www.tvguidelines.org, the content labels (D, S,
L, or V) may be included to “help parents identify the specific content in a
program;” but this episode of Law & Order: SVU had none of the necessary
descriptors to warn parents of the gruesome content in the show.

Let’s take a look
at the content:

A police officer
escorts Detectives Beck and Stabler to the crime scene where a mother and her
ten-year-old daughter have been brutally raped and murdered. What is discussed
and shown is disturbing:

Officer: “Raped and
tortured, side by side. You ever hear of anything this freaking sick?”

[Stabler pulls the
sheet away from the murdered mother’s body. The mother’s face is shown with
packing tape wrapped tightly around it, her arms bound, and her naked body
covered in blood.]

Beck: “What is
that? Packing tape?”

Stabler: “Wrapped
tight, no way to breathe. He just looked at her face while she suffocated.”

Beck: “Hands are
bound, breasts and genitals slashed…”

Stabler: “A sexual
sadist gets off on pain and humiliation; it doesn’t track that he’d cover ‘em
after. Is this how you found them, officer?”

Officer: “They were
both naked. I was trying to be respectful. I got the sheets from the linen
closet.”

[Stabler then pulls
the sheet away from the little girl’s face revealing packing tape wrapped around
her face and her hands bound with blood all around her.]

Beck: “She can’t be
more than ten.”

This scene is shown
in the first five minutes of the program, even before the opening credits. Just
this portion of the show alone warrants the “V” and the “D” descriptors because
of the depiction of the brutally murdered bodies and the graphic discussion of
what the rapist did. Of course, the rest of the show continues to depict the
dead bodies, either in pictorial form or in the morgue, and the graphic
discussion of rape continues.

With a TV-14
rating, there are no descriptors to warn parents of the content that is in this
episode.

If you agree that
this program was inadequately rated, please write to the TV ratings advisory
board at
tvomb@usa.net and let them know that the TV
ratings once again failed to adequately warn parents about inappropriate
content.

Parents Television Council,
www.parentstv.org, PTC,
Clean Up TV Now, Because our children are watching, The
nation's most influential advocacy organization, Protecting
children against sex, violence and profanity in
entertainment, Parents Television Council Seal of Approval,
and Family Guide to Prime Time Television
are trademarks of the Parents Television Council.